They were once among New York’s most powerful political figures: Sheldon Silver, the former Democratic speaker of the State Assembly, and Dean G. Skelos, the onetime Republican leader of the State Senate. Then, both men were convicted in federal corruption trials, only to have the verdicts overturned on appeal.
Now, with Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, found guilty of corruption charges in the Southern District of New York, his lawyers say they will appeal his conviction aggressively and believe he, too, will be vindicated.
Defense lawyers make such claims routinely, but in the realm of federal corruption cases, they may have reason to be optimistic. The U.S. Supreme Court, in rulings since 2010, has narrowed the legal definition of corruption, resulting in a number of convictions of political figures in New York and elsewhere being overturned.
“We have seen the capacity of appeals courts to surprise us all,” said Martin S. Bell, a former Southern District corruption prosecutor. “If Yogi Berra were to be heard on this, he’d probably say, it ain’t really over until the appeals court sings.”
Still, Mr. Bell and other legal experts said, prosecutors are learning to work within the new rules in ways that may withstand scrutiny from potentially skeptical higher courts.
At Mr. Menendez’s trial, prosecutors presented evidence of a brazen plot in which, they said, the senator and his wife accepted bribes of gold bullion, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a Mercedes-Benz in exchange for his agreeing to do political favors at home and abroad. As part of the scheme, prosecutors said, Mr. Menendez steered weapons and aid to Egypt.
After the verdict, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, whose office prosecuted Mr. Menendez, said the case had “always been about shocking levels of corruption.”
“This wasn’t politics as usual,” Mr. Williams said. “This was politics for profit.”
Mr. Menendez, 70, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was found guilty on all 16 counts he faced, including bribery, honest services wire fraud, conspiracy, extortion, obstruction of justice and acting as an agent for Egypt.
“How much worse could the facts be?” said Carrie H. Cohen, one of the prosecutors at Mr. Silver’s 2015 trial. “How far is the Supreme Court willing to go in limiting what it believes constitutes a bribe scheme under our federal law?” (Mr. Silver was retried and convicted; he died in prison.)
In a landmark 2016 ruling, the Supreme Court tightened the definition of the kind of “official act” that constituted one side of a quid pro quo in a bribery case involving a public official. The unanimous ruling threw out the conviction of Bob McDonnell, a former Republican governor of Virginia. The court held that a bribery scheme must involve an official performing more than routine courtesies like arranging a meeting. An official act has to involve more formal, concrete government actions, like filing a lawsuit or making an administrative determination.
Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University, said the McDonnell ruling noted that its more limited interpretation of “official act” left “ample room” for prosecutors to pursue corruption.
“There’s a lot of areas within the law where there’s shades of gray,” Professor Bader said. “But at some point, we want to think about how to draw that line in a way that is sufficiently protective against criminality but also appreciates the necessity of lawmakers being able to do what they need to do.”
“In the Menendez case, the prosecutors were able to find that sweet spot,” she added.
The McDonnell decision loomed over Mr. Menendez’s trial, including when his lawyers argued unsuccessfully last month after prosecutors rested their case that the charges against him be dismissed.
Avi Weitzman, a lawyer for the senator, told the judge, Sidney H. Stein, that the government had failed to prove that Mr. Menendez performed an official act in the alleged bribery schemes presented by prosecutors.
Mr. Weitzman also argued that there was no evidence of an agreement that constituted a quid pro quo between Mr. Menendez and any of his co-conspirators. The senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, 57, was also charged in the case, but her trial was postponed because she is being treated for breast cancer. She has pleaded not guilty.
At most, Mr. Weitzman told the judge, prosecutors were trying to draw inferences that were unsupported by the facts about an agreement that did not exist. The senator’s actions were the kind of conduct he “often takes to benefit constituents,” Mr. Weitzman said.
Another area of potential appeal was signaled by Mr. Menendez himself, in statements outside the courthouse after his conviction, when he roundly rejected the jury’s finding that he acted as an agent for Egypt.
The verdict made him the first U.S. senator found guilty of acting as an agent for a foreign power.
Mr. Menendez said he had never violated his public oath and had never been anything but a patriot for his country.
“I have never, ever been a foreign agent,” he said, “and the decision rendered by the jury today would put at risk every member of the United States Senate in terms of what they think a foreign agent would be.”
Mr. Weitzman, in his arguments last month, said the government had not shown Mr. Menendez “took direction and instruction” from Egypt.
Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia Law School professor, said there is not a long history of judicial opinions providing clarity on where to draw the line between ordinary contacts with a foreign power that may be part of a legislator’s work, and being an agent of that foreign power.
Regardless, he said, “when you’re bought and paid for, you really are an agent in a way that is different from what we should in any way tolerate of a senator.”
Mr. Menendez’s lawyers could also appeal a pretrial ruling in which Judge Stein rejected their motion to dismiss the charges on the grounds that they flouted protections afforded to members of Congress under what is known as the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause.
The speech or debate privilege bars prosecutors from citing specific legislative actions in an effort to prove a federal lawmaker committed a crime.
During the trial, Mr. Menendez’s lawyers successfully objected to particular text messages prosecutors wanted to show the jury that referred to the senator’s approving or holding up aid to Egypt.
In an oral argument in May, outside of the jury’s presence, a prosecutor, Paul M. Monteleoni, acknowledged that the “speech or debate” clause made the prosecution’s life harder to an extent.
“But it is also not designed to make members of Congress super citizens immune from all criminal responsibility,” Mr. Monteleoni said.
Mr. Menendez’s lawyers could also appeal rulings by Judge Stein during the trial in which he admitted pieces of evidence the defense believed violated the speech or debate clause.
Josh Chafetz, a Georgetown University law professor who studies legislative procedure and the separation of powers, said he would be surprised if Mr. Menendez’s case ended up being overturned, at least on the issue of the speech or debate clause.
Professor Chafetz said that the privilege was meant to be a jurisdictional bar to keep members of Congress from being dragged into court, but that the Supreme Court has adopted a narrower view of the provision at it pertains to bribery, thus affording federal legislators less protection.
“It seems to me the speech or debate clause rulings that the judge made in this case were very much consistent with what the Supreme Court has said,” he added.
Mr. Menendez’s appeal, when it is filed, may echo a theme of the Supreme Court’s recent holding that former President Donald J. Trump was entitled to broad immunity from prosecution for official actions he took while in office, according to Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor.
The Trump and Menendez cases, Professor Roiphe said, were both about the central question of how to hold public officials accountable while still giving them sufficient leeway to do their jobs effectively.
“At a certain level of generality,” she added, “the same central question about our democracy is at issue in both of these two cases.”
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